f13.net

I'd be happy to. First, I'd like to mention that there are aspects to MMOGs that are appealing to me. Specifically, the non-linear and expansive worlds. Since I've been a Zelda fangirl since I was a wee lass (well, except for Adventures of Link), I recognized in MMOGs this element which has been so appealing to me in my favorite console adventure games. However, worlds that are too big can be daunting and something of a bore to run around in. But here are some specific reasons why I haven't gotten sucked in:

1) I think that reliance on other players to progress in the game is a drag, because I feel like I can't just play whenever the hell I want without soliciting help from another person. (I guess I don't game to be social)

2) I'm not a fan of grinding, although I have been known to do it in console games like FFX when I'm having a rough time with a boss that I don't really have enough xp to battle. But the whole "kill 20 rats and come back to me to get your crappy armor upgrade" is not that much fun.

3) I prefer real-time battle to turn-based, but I like "hit the key once and watch 'em slash" even less.

4) I don't like not being able to just hit 'pause' to go have a smoke just because I'm in a not-so-safe area.

5) I prefer games with clearly delineated storylines, so the sense of accomplishment comes from receiving a cutscene instead of a ding. That's not to say that I want a game to force me from one area to another (aforementioned love of Zelda and FF), but when I get sick of collecting rupees I like to have the option of just moving on to the next level.

6) Back to #1, player elitism is retarded and I don't want to deal with it. Again, I don't game to be social. I have RL friends that I like to hang out with, and when I'm geeking out it's because I don't feel like dealing with others (except Sauced, but he's usually just playing something else anyway). That's certainly not to say that people don't make RL friends that they meet in MMOGs, it just hasn't been my experience.

7) A crucial reason why MMOGs haven't really grabbed me is that there's no "story" and therefore no "ending". I want to finish what I start, but there is no finishing a MMOG, just getting fed up with it or moving on to the next shineh.

8. Sometimes if a game is pretty enough the story becomes secondary, but MMOGs kinda all look the same to me. There's the fantasy ones, the cyber punk ones, the war ones and the comic book ones (sometimes they are a combo, but it's still all the same). The differences (that I'm sure many of you will reactively point out) seem really insignificant to me. I don't really care about MMOG economies (they frighten me, actually).

9) The most important reason why I don't play MMOGs: call me crazy, but I thought games were supposed to be FUN. For the reasons listed above, MMOGs just aren't fun for me. I can't understand why players who get so angry about it keep doing it. Masochism? Perhaps. But I have enough stuff to waste my money on, and I'd rather it give me pleasure than an aneurysm.

I'd love to see a new MMOG that can suck me in. I just don't think it's very likely, because the squeaky wheels will keep getting their grease and it's not the kind of grease I want. Make an Animal Crossing MMOG with pvp and dings if you get the most points from the Happy Room Academy and I'll put down the cash. I just seriously doubt that'll happen.

Some of it may be masochism but some of it may be that people have invested so much time into a character that they feel they are that character. When I have played MMOGs I guess I have never really felt that I was the character that I was playing. I was never really invested in the story in any way. Well, Guild Wars did invest me in the story because of the cutscenes and I wanted to know what was going to happen next. The reason Guild Wars stopped being fun was because I wasn't able to complete a certain mission without help from somewhere else. I enjoy playing solo, I don't want to have to ask for help.

Damion Schubert's talk on what Vegas has to teach MMO Developers (http://www.zenofdesign.com/?p=500) brought up a very good point that pegged me as a player. I like playing a game where other people are around me, but that doesn't mean I want to play with those people. I like to do my own thing, but I don't want to do it in a vacuum. I like knowing there's other people around if I get bored or lonely or whatever. I like having the social aspect of the game open to me whenver I feel like it, but I don't want to feel forced that I need to have those people with me to advance in the game.

That is a good point that I didn't know how to articulate in my post above. When I have come the point where I am bored or want to chat with someone dancing next to me, and no one responds, I feel sort of rejected.

Truth:  It Keeps You Regular

That's true for me to some extent as well.  I grew up in a big city, so it's kinda comforting to see other people around, even if I don't want to make eye contact with any of them.

If I'm alone in my house and I write the most amazing story ever, but I can't show it to anyone, I may as well have not written it.  But just because I want other people to witness my accomplishment doesn't mean I want their help.

Great post Voodoo, especially coming from someone who has little experience with these games.

Speaking from a WoW perspective, I prefer seeing them as collections of lots of small stories. You are free to quit playing after e.g. kicking Stavlan's ass around level 32 (with help) or 35, but the Alliance fedex quests leading to that ass-kicking are a nice chain of storytelling. (Starts in Darkshire in Duskwood for any WoW players wanting to try it.)

The problem I see in MMORPGs is the segment of people who play the game too seriously, and cannot quit. You know, power-levelers, min/maxers, the people who memorize raid and party role definitions instead of doing homework. Precisely the ones who claim SOE have to reimburse them for the "investment" of playing SW:G before the recently announched total change of gameplay. Totally disconnected from real life.

But hey, at this site we're too jaded to belong to that group anyway.

There are two groups of people, one of which is ignored.

One group wants to live in "x" world.
One group wants to experience "x" world, with all of it's stories, drama, and chaos.

Guess which group is ignored. That's right, the one that actually requires a heavy amount of creative work. God forbid companies start hiring GOOD writers and have story arcs that last a set period of time and actually END when planned.

I agree with just about everything here, and you've all taken my comments. Stuff I've been saying for years, I just finally gave up on the genre.

Sauced and I were talking about my post last night, and he suggested that for every point I made, I could make a suggestion as to how MMOGs could be changed or improved to grab the otherwise avid gamer. So here goes:

1. Trainable NPCs that can be summoned to assist with missions could alleviate the reliance on other players. I have no idea of the feasibility of this, but it's an idea. Maybe you could sell your trained apprentice to another player after you don't need them anymore.

2. I'm not sure how to eliminate the drag of the grind without simply eliminating the grind. It seems too obvious though, for enemies to simply drop useful items. Maybe instead of killing a million moths there could be puzzle-solving elements, and for example you get the Special Thing when you solve the puzzle and bring it back for your item and XP. Seems less grind-y and more fun.

3. Make battle real-time instead of auto attack. Problem solved.

4. Make an AFK function that makes you invisible until you return. Seriously, how many of you have had to yell "be right there, honey!" when dinner's ready but you're in the middle of a fight? This wouldn't really address being able to pause if you're in a group (you'd just have to catch up with them somehow), but at least it's a start for solo players.

5. I have a feeling that to eliminate the level-up as the primary measure of progress would require a seachange in the genre that would not likely be well-accepted. However, I don't think it's an unreasonable or unimplementable idea. I know Guild Wars attempted to incorporate the cutscene into the storyline, but it's otherwise far more similar to other MMOGs than not (e.g., no ending). And I do like leveling up, but it seems to me to be a weak premise for the advancement of a game. But maybe instead of not being able to advance without being uber, you could make the area attainable and complete-able as you go along (like finding keys to get to the next room, or getting the weapon upgrade that allows you to knock down the door).

6. You can't always fit in with the people you're around. I know I'm not much of a team player (that's why I was in track and field and swimming instead of team sports), and that's my problem. Griefers will always exist and will always be a pain in the ass.

7. I know that having a happy ending in a MMOG is not the point. You've invested so much into your character, and can kick so much ass. But for what? To run around killing the same thing over and over? I can do that in Wind Waker, and I still had my happy ending. Better stories require more expensive help and that usually means a sacrifice must be made elsewhere. Schild hit on this, and I think we've all been wary of the fact that developers may be under the impression that you can please the most people by giving them more shiny instead of better stories (hence Madden's success). Again, a shift of this magnitude will be a ways off. Those of us who care more about quality than quantity might have a long wait if we're holding out for Ueda to make a MMOG, for example. We can't always have our cake and eat it too, I guess.

8. I made a suggestion initially about how to expand the genre by the creation of additional subgenres (an Animal Crossing MMOG was my sarcastic example). Something odd or goofy would be nice, perhaps something more cartoony. I dunno. If I'm gonna grind away, I guess I'd prefer it to be something like in Harvest Moon where you can catch a shitload of fish and make sashimi (if you've scouted out the recipe) to give away or sell.

9. When games (and gamers) can stop taking themselves so fucking seriously I think we all win. Until then, I will play Majora's Mask for the thirtieth time and wait with bated breath for the new releases.

Guild Wars started this, but the henchman had retarded AI. Imaginary Numbers is making a turn-based MMOG strategy game based around this concept, sort of.


Giving the grind interesting context like WoW or CoH helps. Making the grind shorter, or the dings more frequent helps too.


New SWG or Planetside.


Have to have a built-in delay before it could become active, something like 30 seconds to 1 minute so as not to be exploited.


The Asian markets have a much greater selection of genre types (and MMOG's are a medium, not a genre goddamnit) than North America. NA devs are just now starting to understand that the mass market doesn't play fantasy or sci-fi.


That is an impossibility.

I agree with all your points. Yet I still play, and I still enjoy it. Why is that?

Its all about the metagame for me. I like guilds, I like being an officer and having responsability. For me the fun game is the politics and the people at the highest level. Yes, leveling up was pretty decent in WoW, but I didnt love it. I have much more fun in the end game. And I dont mean the 8 hour raids.

Example: A few months ago we had a big split in the guild. A bunch of the younger members of my guild who joined mainly because of "phat l00t" ended up splitting off and forming their own guild. Now normally this would be hard for my guild, but you rebuild and go on. Now, the guy who lead this split was the forumer guild master of my guild. He never did any work as the GM, except to muscle his powers around when some one upset him, or to throw temper tantrums when things didnt go his way. He would refuse to attend officer meetings, then complain about being uninformed on officer decisions. Basically myself and the other AGM where running the show, and he didnt like when we counterminded his orders. (like calling off a planned raid to go to battlegrounds becasue the piece of loot he wanted didnt drop). At one point he quit the guild during one of his temper tantrums. We allowed him back in after he profoundly apologized and said he didnt want to lead any more, and just wanted to be a member.
Anyway, this is getting longer than I thought. He didnt want back in as a member, he started spreading lies about officers forcing him out of his position and such. What Im getting at, is when he left, he held a MAJOR grudge against my guild, and after forming his new guild, he did every thing in his power to hurt my guild. After several months of a propaganda war on their part, his new guild formed with mainly realy young players and loot whores feel apart.
Now to my point. I had a ton of fun during that time. I had a clear enemy in game (one I couldnt attack), and the politicing between the guilds on the server really made it enjoyable to me. It also made it VERY sweet when he guild, which rocket to be one of the most powerful on the server, crashed and burned. I felt vindicated.

This is the kind of stuff that keeps me coming back day in and day out. The games may not have a great story, but we sure had a story of backstabbing, loss, betrayal, rebuilding, redemption, and victory.

Thank you El Gallo for explaining perfectly why the current crop of MMO's sucks and I hate them.  I mean seriously, what he is saying here is a step forward from how it was with EQ1.  THAT IS A STEP FORWARD, THE GAMES MADE IN THE MMO MEDIUM SO FAR HAVE SUCKED THAT BADLY.

*ahem*

I have had some fun here and there yes, but god do they suck.

Also give me a new gadget/ability with the frequent dings!  There's really no reason to give someone a new level unless it comes with some new ability.

Wow. good stuff all around. Let me toss in my random useless thoughts (and apologies forthe Sir Brucing from hell)...
Actually, I'll go one further. All npc's and villains should utilize whatever advancement or specialization mechanic the players use. They get better, cost more, and utilize better strategies over time. And don't tell me that it can't be done. it's server side. The client doesn't need to know about this processing.
I'll stick with your first answer: eliminate the grind. In 3.5 D&D there is a subsystem which basicall gets rid of the idea of hit point progression. You just have a life point pool that you generate at character start, and that's it. What's the difference between a level 1 and level 20 character? Versatility. Knowledge. Tactics. But if either one gets shot in the face with a shotgun they are both goo.
Auto-attack is the most non-fun mechanic ever invented.
Yes please.
Just do it. No really. Make a game that works without a grind. People will find something else to whine about, or not play your game. *shrug*

Honestly though, I'd prefer even more of a 'non-ending'. in fact, I think the 'endgame' is the most fallacious concept ever invented fora world that has no 'ending' as it is. Either make the game a linear adventureRpgWTF like she is talking about or have NO ENDING. The endgame is the next marauding hoard of barbarian nomads heading toward your quaint little town with all your stuff that is tied to that location. And if you don't fight them off.....
Yep
Agreed
Lots of micro games that cater to specific niches makes a lot more sense to me than uber mega hit projects. Hell Once you've developed the engine and the art assets, make ten games. At this point hardware is generally cheaper than software. Take advantage of that.
Civ 4 for me! No MMOG has ever evoked the same it's 2am and I need to finish Just. One. More. Turn....

These are great points. Uttered forever, but rarely together.

It's basically what separates MMOGs from actual Games. Rather, I consider them as a hobby. There's no real structure, there's only ever incremental goals, and it's entirely self motivated.

For me, it's the presence of other people at all. I like that opportunity and exercise at my own whim. I ditch games that make soloing too punitive or boring, because yes, there are those occasions I want to log in for 40 minutes and farm for faction/money/quest/drop. Further, very few games bother integrating anything deeper than a bunch of people doing their own thing alongside other people against a common target anyway. Only the big boss-like mobs require some creativity. Otherwise it's just casters casting, tanks tanking, healers healing, and in general everyone doing everything they'd normally do solo except this target has an asston of hit points.

MMOGs are a hard sell to gamers though. I can't count how often people walk by me playing and I'm sitting their medidating. Yea. That looks fun  :roll:

But I'm not really a gamer per se. I like the ability to share trial and tribulation with other people who know what I'm talking about. By extension, it's the character growth factor. What bores me in non-MMOGs is the finite nature of the experience. I've honestly not finished a solo game since Ultima V. They're like Shroedinger puzzles. Once I figured out how to solve it, actually going through the motions to do so is irrelevant. It just leaves me empty, because there was this HUGE MASSIVE FUN timesink that now ends. So all I've got left is the desire to replicate that feeling in some NEW HUGE MASSIVE FUN timesink.

So the very lack of an ending that does not compel you is the very essence of what does me. MMOGs don't end until I'm bored.

Or the execution sucked :)

Voodolilly, I  :heart: people who  :heart: Majora's Mask.  When I say its my fav Zelda game to fans of the series I always get weird looks.

That used to be the same thing that kept me going. Until I realized that once I got bored I had truly wasted time playing the game x number of hours. See, with a single player game, even if you got bored you can say "I got bored about halfway through the game." You spent your time playing half of a game with an ending. With an MMORPG, what you see is often what you get. The last 5 minutes at the high level are maybe, at most, 30% different than what you see at a lower level. Same skills, different animation/hotkey, same people but instead of only needing a group of two, you need a group of 8 to 80. BLEH. GIve me a storyline every 3 months to a year. Give me something tangible. I don't have time to waste on senseless bullshit anymore. There are too many games with a cohesive storyline and ending. As for socializing, I'll just call a friend while I'm playing a game.

I asked this in some other thread (don't remember which), but didn't get an answer.

Why are "non gamers" even playing games to begin with? What happened here? Were MMO's somehow seen as the successors to those shitty VRML chatrooms people used to use in the 90's?

[edit] Also, as you can see, the Bartle info in my sig says "60%" socializer. It would seem that I'm being contradictory, but while I agree with your sentiment above, there's another social aspect that I do appreciate about mmog's: Fame and Infamy. It's very much "Social" -- But I can do either without saying a word to anyone in game.

Non gamers aren't playing games like we know them. Non gamers are playing things like like the MSN Gaming Zone, Pogo, and the ultimate ground-up meatloaf of them all, Puzzle Pirates. I still don't consider those people gamers. I consider them walking wallets. Unless you're talking about a different kind of "non-gamer."

This is a great example of why I hate mmo, guilds, and 'raiding' endgames. I get more than my fill of that bullshit in real life, I don't need it in my leisure time.

Thanks, sweet-pea. Me too. Actually, I made the mistake of trying to jump back into a game I haven't touched in a few months and couldn't remember what the hell I'd been doing. Then I realized I was at the water temple (my least favorite in MM and in OoT) and turned it off. I need to just start a new game and start from scratch.


I think of Madden people and the frat boys who started "gaming" because MTV kept plugging Halo 2. The worst thing that can ever happen to gaming is when "they" like it too.

Seconded. I refuse to join any large guilds or participate in raids because of this. Small guilds with friends I know are fine and tend to suit my playstyle pretty well however. I had a lot of fun in something like EverQuest doing dungeons with one group only.

large guilds have one major benefit:  it's really easy to get a group.  And they generally aren't idiots, and the ones who are you can tell by name.  Much better than random groups.  And it's also good for mis-tell humor.  I've been in guilds with drama, and guilds without.  And the odd thing is, the drama all seems to boil down to one thing, LOOT.  The CoH guild I'm in is huge, and has no drama... and no loot.  EQ guild?  Drama.  DAoC?  Drama. 

Alkiera

I've been through all the guild drama bullshit. It's why I'm so much more of a casual/solo player today. Life is too short for that bullshit.

Says the man who was sleeping with a guide....

Is sleeping with an ex-guide. She wasn't a guide when I was a guild leader.

That's been around for a looong time.

Let me know how that changes with salvage.

..wait, that's 'guild loot', not personal loot, and thus not applicable, right?

--GF

So she was sleeping with you because you were her guildleader?

Pretty much agree with everything you have said Vlily.  

I wonder if there's not a complex problem out there for designers you sort of touch on; namely, the division of people who mainly prefer learning vs. conquering, or in another perspective, those people keen on self-improvement vs. self-promotion.  I don't mean that people are just somehow anti-social vs. social, but rather that there's a style of play that comes from some really intrisinc ways of living.  Not everyone has a "killer instinct", and those who don't act differently in MMO's (either being the same or acting in a new persona).  Personally, I get a lot more enjoyment out of figuring out things in MMO's but I still consider myself an "achiever".  But I rarely group.  And it's because of that I also get tired of most MMO's after awhile.  

I'm all for games like planetside (well, something more, but in the same vein), but making a FPS-style mmorpg doesn't make sense to me.  I don't think there's that many people who really want to play a pure twitch mmorpg.  The styles just clash so harshly. My hand feels arthritic just from thinking about the leveling grind in a game like that.

Honestly, Asheron's Call has shown the most promise here when it comes to projectiles.  Arrows and spells had their own arcs and trajectories, but the players current state was factored into them, so they sorta gave you a 'lead' on the player.  Spells were super-fast, and arrows had a small 'splash-area' from where they landed (if it didn't outright hit you) to determine if the arrow tagged you.  Spells were easier to sidestep, but the best way to avoid an arrow was to run in the opposite direction that you were from the player shooting at you.  So, while it wasn't what you're consider pure twitch, it was just enough to give the combat some real depth.

But what SWG is doing?  Who cares, really.  They're just making the combat "not auto attack" and everyone around here is all in a tizzy about it.

Did you enjoy Diablo 2?  It seems to hit everything you want.

At least those are "games". They're still playing them as "games", whether they view themselves as "gamers" or not. All of those examples, like the Zone, are at their core, games, and can first and foremost, only be enjoyed as such. The people who play on Pogo ultimately play because they like the underlying mechanics behind the stuff. They are "gamers" in the most fundamental definition of word (just not in the cultural definition of the word). 

The people I'm talking about are those who either 1) Use mmo's as a vrml substitute or 2) Achievers . Those who are more concerned about ends and goals, instead of means. They are playing for fulfilment, if you will, more than they are enjoyment (and there is a sharp difference, I think).

These two types represent something that I've never really seen in other games (or at least never recognized in the same way), but yet, in mmo's, they represent the largest segment of subscribers and players.....And in turn, the genre in catered towards them. My original question was pertaining to socializers, but it applies to both: Why is an entire "game" genre being designed and catered to a "non gaming" population? To me, it's a bizarre idea.

[edit] A bizarre idea that has made an asston of cash, mind you. I won't take that fact away. I bet though, if the games were garnered towards the sensibilities of those who actually like games, there'd be an even bigger asston of cash in the pot.

[edit] Eh..There's another point I didn't touch upon. Games on the Zone or Pogo can still be enjoyed as the games they are. They are the same old games we've all been playing for years. That some people are playing for prizes doesn't mean the games themselves are about the prizes (or some other exterior factor outside of gaming). MMO's, on the other hand, seem to be designed with a lot of non gaming factors in mind (Chiefly the factors that socializers and achievers bring to the table). It's no wonder why they suck. Show me another type of game that goes out of it's way to take those two into account in such a direct way.

That's like asking why do people build casino's. All EQ clones are pretty much built for the same reason.

Do casino's change the underlying mechanics of those games to not even be games though? Poker is still a game, Craps is still a game, Blackjack is still a game. Despite the fact that there may be winnings and prizes, those games can still be fun in and of themselves. There's a difference between having prizes and designing a game from the ground up to only be about prizes (which would be EQ).

When you come to Vegas to win, just the desire to win shit isn't going to get you anywhere. You've got to win at something (be it Poker, Blackjack, or Craps). It's not really the same case with EQ: Just the desire is catered to. That's the "game" (which really isn't a game). 

Anyways...Friday night, and I'm afraid that I'm too lost in my thoughts to articulate what I'm trying to say here in less abstract terms. Apologies. Hopefully the above makes sense.

I was referring more to the slot machine than any of the other games of chance. Slot machines are designed from the ground up to only be about prizes. Do people actually derive joy out of the spinning fruit and blinking lights? It may fire off the addicting "ohhh shiny" center in your brain but I seriously doubt it stimulates "fun". The core mechanic in EQ clone MMOs is the same way. The more freedom you have ingame (which makes it more worldy) the more you can piggyback your own fun onto it but the core mechanic is still the same.

One thing I think that does need to be figured out is how to make games like Planetside and WWIIOL have more meaning. Planetside never ends and it's a turn off because you are locked in an endless inevitably pointless struggle. WWIIOL ends when one side takes over (most of?) the map and it resets. This method was also a turn off for me and I'm not sure why since it works for board games like Axis and Allies.

Would forced character retirement (and ending) make for better MMOs? It might hurt player retention but I think the games would be better overall. Would procedurally generated worlds (think Spore) make for a more fulfilling game of Planetside by changing the setting all the time (via some story line mechanic)? Would hot dropping on 1000 different worlds make a difference vs. the same 10 continents or whatever?


You know what is really wrong with MMORPGs (EQ clones)? They are too cozy and safe. The only "danger" in them (exp lose) is fabricated and ultimately meaningless.

Hell, if they could just do this part as well the crappy slot machines, then I'd probably stick around longer. If it's Virtual Vegas, then I want my virtual All You Can Eat Buffets too damnit!  :wink:

I don't know.  If you don't have some method of keeping score, Poker is pretty goddamn boring.

I'd say that puts it right around the level of MMOGs who, without the dings and points, would be pretty goddamn boring.

I agree with what you said.

As to "games"....another reason UO kicked ass. You could hang out in a player-run tavern and play chess. Why aren't all these Yahoo Games type games embedded in MMO shitbag advancement/collection games? See Stray's quote above.

It works for A&A because when you're 'done' you walk away and don't have anything else invested in the game.  WW2OL you've paid your $15, so you're going to log-in the next day.. and the day after that, even if the game just reset.   Or, if you think 'well i"ll stop as soon as our side wins' and that happens to be the day after a billing period, you're going to feel screwed and continue playing.   Some kind of "pay X and you can play until the win/loss" would be a nice feature in such a game, but then the problem becomes your players WILL game the system so they don't ever have to pay again.

Ultimatly, that's the problem.  MMOs don't have an ending, so people feel obligated to continue playing. And since you're playing the same game over and over again you get bored, and when you're bored you're pissed because you're spending money.   Look at my x-fire. I have 600+ hours invested in WoW.  The next closest game is Civs with 77 hours, then BF2 with 75 hours.  I enjoyed the hell out of those two games, but I'll move-on to something else and replay them again later.  Hell I'll even skip a day or two (or even weeks in the case of BF2) and not feel bad about it with both of them.  WoW, however, I feel obligated to log-in to because I'm paying for it.   Each day I skip might only be $.53, but that sits in in the back of my mind, niggling at me because it does have a cost.  Along with that cost I expect entertainment, and when I'm not entertained I get pissed because I've lost something.

Forced character retirement would only amplify this.  You're not just losing a subscription fee, then, but also all the previous time invested.  The only way you could build that into the game is if the cost for the game was based on the length of the character's life.  Your $15.99 gets you a character that lives X number of hours, after which they coak and die.  Could be intereresting, in fact, and would certainly require a less time-intensive game than we currently see, and allow for devs to worry about a story or a narritave rather than "THE ENDGAME."

Pocedural worlds, however, would only mask the problem for a little while.  1 planet, 3 planets or 3,000 plantes in Planetside you still have the same problem.  Your faction wins most of them, then loses to whichever side the Aussies play while you're at work. It doesn't make the game more interesting if you're on LegoWorld vs JungleWorld if your problem with the core mechanics are 'you can never win'.  It might keep your interest for a little while so you could see all 3,000 environments, but after that you'd still be asking yourself about the futility of it all, which is your core problem.

As to 'no danger'.  There's no danger in ANY mmo, even oldschool UO.  It's a fucking video game, man. The only danger is that you wasted your cash or deluded yourself into thinking that anything in it matters.

I think for me it's much simpler than that: I would rather spend money on a product than a service. It's probably why I have a sweet collection of mounted insects but have only been to a salon once in my life. I'll always have those insects, and I can cut my own damn hair.

Do you have Cable TV?  If so, how do you justify the payment for that service vs just broadcast TV?   I saw this question posed in a discussion about game micropayments and I haven't come up with an answer as to why I can justify Cable TV for myself but not game micropayments. So, how would you justify a CATV sub, but not a game sub.

My fiance pays for the cable. Besides, we have a Tivo so combined with HBO it's basically like having free movies that we can watch whenever we want (kinda like buying a DVD). Obviously we spend money on some services (internet, electricity, water, etc.), but generally speaking, I'd rather have something to hold in my hands. Guild Wars made a huge stride by not having monthly charges, but not many other games are following suit.

Also, regarding twitch as an alternative to the much-maligned auto-attack, I hate to be fussy but I'm not a huge fan of fps either. Oh wells.

You missinterpreted what I ment about danger. I ment there is no danger for your character. Ultimately your character can not lose. There is no item loss. There is no stat loss. There is no age or limb loss. Your character is like an ageless person in a padded cell with a straight jacket playing dress up while getting force fed lollipops.

Take Mount & Blade for example. Your band can get wiped out, you can get robbed, you have to crawl back to town with only your life, and then start over. EQ clones have no equivalent mechanic as getting your group wiped out means nothing except for the time it takes to get back to the camp spot. There are no character changing moments in an EQ clone. You choose a fighter character and no matter what happens to that fighter character he will always be a fighter character. He can die a thousand deaths and only gets stronger.

I guess what I'm advocating for is less emphasis a single static invincible character+items and more emphasis on multiple dynamic characters that have a definitive beginning and end to them.

Well, CoV has wonderful Mission Failure, where you can lose the contact that started the mission, and any potential story arcs that you might like to look at without rolling an alt.  That's a fairly severe penalty, in my opinion, but is built into the game in such a fashion that you still get a little token XP for going through the arc.

I wouldn't say that twitch is neccessarily "fps". Just something that mostly relies on your observance and input, and not left randomly to the character dice rolls.

Not all games that require you to be an active participant are fps's. Is Donkey Kong an fps? When Donkey Kong is hurling flaming barrels at you, do you just stand there, relying on some dice rolling mechanic to see whether you get hit or not?

No. The game leaves it up to you to just jump out of the way.

Basing any opinion on VD's dislike is paramount to disaster.  NO MORE BLOW JOBS, MAKES ME FEEL INFERIOR! 

Blah.

(http://www.itburnouts.com/phaedrus/images/clown.jpg)

Edit.  666 On this post.  Nice.  Fuck all of you.  Seriously.

Chill, Winston.

Seriously though, what the hell moment of drama did I miss? There are two people who've lately been pretty rude to her, and I have no understanding as to why.

I'm not even defending her here, she's a big girl. I just wonder why it keeps seeping into various threads. What makes it that important?

Nothing. I think Cheddar is upset he has no good games to play right now. Also known as sand in the gamer's vagina. We've all had that before. Hell, isn't that how these types of sites are started?

To be honest, I don't know what type of gaming site this is anymore. Or what it was in the first place. Or where exactly I fit in.

Not an insult or anything. I really just don't know. Threads like this confuse me all the more.

What?

Uh, after I failed the capper (or possibly middle mission, I don't know) for an arc from Dmitri Russianov or whoever in Cap Au Diable, he went right back to giving me his next story arc involving his old creations and the Spetsnaz.

The CauD contacts you get from the paper/broker stop giving you new missions at 16, unless you're already on a story arc in which case they'll let you finish. At 16 (or at 15 if you fill the bar) they pass you off to the next tier up - Wheeler, the Golden Roller, and Marshall Brass.

--GF

This game sounds familiar to me... Oh Yes!! (http://www.sissyfight.com/) ;)

(http://www.sissyfight.com/sissyfight/imgs/title4.gif)

Don't be such a damn drama queen. Cheddar was being a douche, he's often a douche towards voodoolilly. 

Here, have a kitten.   :hello_kitty:

Drama queen?

Just telling the truth. I have no idea where the hell many people are coming from half the time.

Take MMO fans for instance...

People laugh at guild competition and dynamics and whatnot, but really, social interaction and relationships seem to be a very large factor in what substains long-term MMO subscriptions.  You can advocate the continuous content that is unique to MMOs, but that's all essentially a catalyst to keep social interaction fresh; that's how I see it, at least.  When one wants immediately engaging and fulfulling entertainment without any of that "other people" BS, persistant worlds aren't exactly the best place to look. 

I find it interesting that so many of you fine folk reject this idea, even when it has been at the heart of the genre, or medium, or whatever, since its inception, pretty much.

Perhaps things will change or evolve?  It's not my place to say, but I imagine technology puts a large restraint on many ideas.

I was specifically referring to the Ghost Widow/Wretch story arc.

I never get the "wasting time" philosophy when it comes to MMOGs. I'm a lazy bastard, and while not anti-social, I am no socialite. This leaves me with a lot of free time that I will never fill with anything remotely constructive. If I wasn't playing MMOGs I'd be playing other games, or reading, or watching tv, or listening to music, or painting minature soldiers, or something that is on the whole rather unconstructive. If I'm happy doing what I'm doing then my recreation time is being spent in a manner I want it to. If I'm not having fun I'll just drop what I'm doing and move on. No time is wasted because the time was wasted the very second I had no work or social responsibilities for that timeframe.

If I grind at Tyr's hand for 3 hours straight (yep, done that quite a few times) I didn't necessarily have fun but nothing else in the moment appealed to me more and it didn't really bother me. If I had a good book I felt like reading I'd be doing that, if a good show was on I'd be watching TV, if my mates were at a bar and I felt like going I'd be there, etc. When I look back I don't see X amount of hours spent playing a game I no longer like, I see X amount of idle hours that were filled by something that was as or more enjoyable than anything else available to me at the time.

/shrug

Also I now love guild dynamics and can totally relate to what Morphiend is saying. I wont relate the ins and outs of whats going on in my little corner of WoW but suffice to say it is a source of enjoyment for me at the moment. It's like playing any other game in a way. In an FPS you might come to a point that is difficult for you and you die and die and get frustrated, but you are still having fun at the same time, and once you get past that point you feel real good about it. Guild drama is like a different mode or style within the game IMO, like say jumping puzzles. If you come across a tough jumping puzzle in an FPS and you don't like them you will hate it. You just want to get back to shooting at things and the puzzle is in the way. If on the other hand you LIKE jumping puzzles you'll have a ball, even if sometimes it does get frustrating and sometimes it makes you want to quit in weaker moments, you still are having fun. That's the way I am with guild drama/politics atm. Sure it's a pain in the ass sometimes but it is still a source of enjoyment for me, and that's all that counts.

Maybe some of you wont be able to understand that, but it's like watching a scary movie or tear jerker. While you are evoking negative emotions most of the time, you do so purposefully because in some way that is enjoyable for you. Hope you guys see what I'm trying to say, it is 5am for me and I've been up quite some time.

Err....We're just speaking in relation to games. "Wasting time" isn't used in some all encompassing sense of the phrase.

It's just our way of seperating the directly game oriented activities from the more indirect ones.

Yeah, in particular I use "grind" to connotate gameplay that feels like actual work and is not fun. Like I said, sometimes I don't mind killing a bunch of baddies for rupees so I can buy the sweet whatever, but sometimes it's physically exhausting irl to sit and plug away at some bullshit just to advance or move forward in a game. I never really think of gaming as a waste of time unless I spend two hours trying to figure something out and realize it was fairly obvious from the beginning.

It's a waste of time to sit in an overcamped Guk waiting for the Sage to spawn every half-hour. Well, hoping it's not his placeholder, in which your entire hour was wasted. Then hoping he has his drop, if not, again, wasted time.

After camping the motherfucking jboots for the better part of a year on and off, I can say EQ wasted a lot of my time, and is directly responsible for the bulk of my dislike of mmogs.

I could sit defense in a base in Planetside and not see a soul for an hour and not feel it was wasted. It's when the game wastes my time by design that I get staebby.

Go read El Gallo's post I quoted on the first page of the thread.  It is the perfect summation of how EQ clones suck monkey balls, made by someone who was just realistically theorizing how the power creep in WoW will work.

Evil PvPers twisting my words against the true Gospel!

Unlike most of the strident casuals, I don't cry myself to sleep every night because Furor has shinier pixels than I do.  I just don't fucking care.  All I care about is that there is enough fun/challenging/interesting/new/rewarding stuff for me to do.  I care about power creep only indirectly, because it makes it difficult for the design team to do that.  WoW looks like they may be able to contain power creep so I get what I want. 

Of course, I am a PvEr first.  I dabble in PvP quite a bit for fun, but it isn't my raison d'etre.  I understand why people who are PvPers first and foremost want equally shiny (or equally effective) pixels.  However, you cannot have meaningful PvP in a persistent world MMO.  People need to accept this and move on.   

Perhaps not for largenormous MMOs, but niche MMOs can certainly still do it.

Unfortunately, too few people give a shit about creating them, because they are constantly chasing the big-budget blockbuster MMOG.

When playing a game for an extended period of time, I like to "not know what's around corner" so I can go around the corner and find good and bad things. With the current crop of PvE games it doesn't take long before I feel the know whats around the corner.  The death penalties and harsh PvP, I feel punished for looking around corner.  But with good PvP, going around the corner stays interesting much longer. So, I am not married to PvP but its the only thing that can hold my attention for any length.  I long for the day when somebody with bust out of the rut and make a game where going around the corner is interesting again.  But, with WoW, the rut seems to be widening.

I think your post was great, it wasn't anything but a realistic answer to someone's question of whether they should bother doing all the work to get into MC/BWL now or if they can just sit back and wait for the creep and the resulting easy-mode MC equivalent loot drops.

But in the context of Voodoo's thread about why she doesn't understand the deal with MMO's its a perfect example of something console gamers just will not tolerate.

Your post boils down to:

-Defeat initial content to get uber loot
-New content (initial content difficulty+1)
-Defeat new content to get uber loot+1
Repeat...

Which is fine, as long as the encounters and zones get bigger and more detailed, the gear gets more shiney and they introduce new color coded levels of awesomeness in their itemization its all good fun.

I've got nothing against that, but the fact is it takes a ton of time to create new content and new uber loot therefore it is important to make sure that defeating the content is as big as a timesink as possible (remember they need you to stick around to get your sub money).  Hence the 20+ player raids, flag systems, monster camping, rare drops, long grinds to get to the content/loot endgame and so on.

Yeah, you and I are on the same page there.  You are right to boil it down to get sword a to kill dragon 1 for sword b, which you use to kill dragon 2. . . . Though this has pretty much been the model of just about every computer and console RPG since Akalabeth.   I am fully aware that it takes a fuckton of money to make content and that this model requires a super-mega-fuckton of content to keep moving.  I accept that there will always be some downtime built in, even for games that make a billion dollars their first year (this would still be true even if said game wasn't designed by a gaming house known for slowness and owned by a megacorp like Vivendi which is hemorrhaging money out of every other orifice of its vast, bloated body).

All Akalabeth-style RPG games (the FFs, the Bgs, the NWNs, the KotORs and all the rest)  water down their content to make them last longer.  Now, they don’t (most of them) water down the content with as much filler as WoW does, but the difference is not outrageous.  At least not to me.  To me, the filler-to-content ratio in WoW is acceptable, but the filler-to-content ratio in EQ or FFO is unacceptable.  I don’t expect single-player level filler-to-content ration in MMOGs. Keep in mind that MMOGs are cheaper: people are essentially bitching that they don’t get the equivalent of a new KotOR II delivered to their doorstep every week for $15 a month (this is the main reason I wish they could charge a lot more for these games).  Even if I had an infinite amount of money, I couldn’t get 15 hours a week of quality single-player CRPGing for the next few years.  Even if I could, it just plain is not as fun for me if 

Anyway, assuming you like Akalabeth-style RPG games, and want to play a massively multiplayer, persistent world version, this is something you have to face.  Pick a game that is matched well to the amount of time you want to play.  Considering my filler-to-content standards, WoW works well for me because I play about 15 hours a week.  If I played 5hours a week, I think that I wouldn’t be able to get shit done.  If I played 40 hours a week, I think I’d have run out of things to do a long time ago.

Now, there’s other things to consider too, of course.  I don’t mind 20-40 person raids.  In fact, I rather enjoy them.  I find them challenging and fun, so long as you are not guilded with a bunch of asstards.  I don’t guild with large numbers of asstards.  Some people absolutely must be the star every second they play, so they naturally won’t enjoy that.  Maybe they want an even more soloable game.  There are costs though.  There is downtime built in to grouping, and a learning curve built into cooperative play.  A single player oriented game will go by much faster, unless it has some other filler to provide downtime.

Anyway, I’ve rambled a lot here.  The post that started this thread is the same post that people have made on this board and its predecessors for years (and I know the author knows that, just like I know this reply is the same one me or someone else has made to those other posts).  The genre isn’t for everyone, and I don’t think that means there is something wrong with the genre.  What gets on my nerves is the idea that there is some easy formula to radically change things – that developers are just morons too stupid to stop making games along this formula (though I have given in to this mentality many times myself).  I don’t think they (by and large) are.  They make games according to this formula because this formula has worked for 25 years.

The “cures” for this state of affairs are far worse than the disease.  Cure #1 is randomly generated content, which means content is now cheap enough to remove all the filler.  However, randomly generated content fucking sucks balls and will always suck balls.  Cure #2 is the PvP oriented game, where other players are the content.  The problem here is that PvP is only meaningful if a match hurts the loser and/or helps the winner.  But this quickly devolves into perma-winners and perma-losers unless you do regular board wipes (which is why every competitive game or sport wipes the board between matches).  Doing that is the equivalent of getting on your knees and begging your players to quit.

I just don’t see the radical genre-shattering re-write (other than pure chatroom “games with no game in them”, like the imaginary Sims-Online-That-Doesn’t-Suck).  The genre will get better by refining current principles and adding new bells and whistles.  You can have an Akalabeth/Diku style MMOG with more Koster-dollhouse features, so long as those features are subordinate to the core game.  You can have an Akalabeth/Diku style MMOG with a PvP sub-game with ladder scoring but no meaningful in-game effects beyond some relatively insignificant extra gear (WoW does this pretty well, though it would be better if PvE achievements had less of an impact on PvP).  Of course you can have Akalabeth/Diku style MMOGs with varying levels of those two add-ons, and with varying content-to-filler ratios, settings, and group-dependency.  But I don’t see a radical re-invention of the whole genre coming along for, well, ever.

You either like the genre or you don’t.

No. WWIIOL might have been better if every time the game reset the map was a new random map (it just wouldn't have been WWII anymore). Normal FPS' already impliment this mechanic by changing levels every X minutes.

Take Planetside or even Diablo and impliment a planetwide battle until one side wins/loses. Once a side wins or loses a planet you never get to play on that planet again and it gets chalked up in your "wins" column. The battle moves on to a new planet. Throw in dangerous procedural flora and fauna as a side show on the PvP.

Do I care if the other side wins some planets when I'm not around? Not really as all it does it throw more twists into the story line.

Winning a planet simply increases your side's shiny. Be it bigger/shinnier weapons/ships/effects even though they do all the same damage as before. Throw in a galactic war storyline + cutscenes on every planet win and loss. Use the story line and the fun as the way to keep players interested instead of appealing to their sense of crackpipeness with levels.

In fact the Dune licence might be a good fit for this because the actual galactic war isn't covered in the novels.



Definitively winning battles but not the war is good enough for me. I'm not opposed to one side winning the war inline with a storyline down the road either. Endlessly fighting the same unwinable battle over and over with no storyline is what gets old.



Actually random PvP in GW keeps me pretty happy because I win or lose every 3-5 minutes. I don't wonder about the futility of it because it's fun. I can quit whenever I want (even in the middle of a battle) because it just doesn't matter. What sucks about it (besides losing) is it's the same 4 maps since the beta and there is no metagame+storyline stacked on top of the wins/loses.

My primary motivation for even going into this was that I'm aware that certain people think my opinion of MMOGs (and their developers) is based in ignorance and therefore doesn't matter. I just wanted to take the chance to demonstrate that yes, I have played them but I don't like them anyway, and dislike them for the very reasons that some you others don't. I'm not trying to shatter any worlds or change any minds.

The thing I can't really understand is why this genre (or medium) of gaming warrants such staunch defending by its devotees. If I said I don't play sim games would anyone get their panties in a wad over it? I don't think so, and I certainly don't think anyone would effectively tell me to shut up and leave because I said I didn't care for them. People who call me a "console gamer" are correct, but stop trying to use it as a fucking insult. (Yes, I'm talking to you.)

The people who defend MMO's so staunchly and are so insulted when people bash them are gamers who truly believe that massive-multiplayer is the medium of the future.  If you read Haemish's recent article and the books he mentioned you would understand the hope that is attached for so many nerds to currently nonexistent MMO's.  Its a medium with so much more possibility.  I think everyone who defends MMO's deep down has a certain dream of a perfect blend of features, community and gameplay.

Myself, I imagine a (using Margalis' terms from the Rush to World thread) wild west pvp virtual world.  Where player justice was supported and encouraged, where people would end up roleplaying because the gameworld itself felt so natural but was not hampered with stupid Tolkien fantasy cliche bullshit.  City building, arms dealing and a myriad of other economic and political professions (not just the good old killing of others) would give every player type a role they could truly enjoy and feel appreciated by the gameworld for performing.  The gameplay would of course be a sublime mix of first person shooter features and cerebral tactical choices. 

Anyways, thats why so many people don't want to hear MMO's disparaged, their fantasy worlds will never exist if the medium is not perfected.

That kind of makes me sad.

I think I might have to try Guild Wars based on what Krakrok stated, I am a time starved gamer and I don't care for building up my butt-sitting strenght to get decent at a game.  Hence why I quit EQ, DAoC, and have petered out on WoW and CoH.  Plus my life is stressful enough that I don't want any bullshit from a game, and frankly there isn't enough skill in mmog games.

I guess it goes back to, "On any given Sunday"  from the NFL, where even though one team looks like it is going to dominate the underdawg...sometimes the dawgs will stomp your nuts into the ground, grill-em with the brats, and feed em back to ya with a side of ass-kicking chili  :-D  I don't want level and time to be the only thing that matters in a game.  I prefer, suprise, shot placement, combined arms tactics, and ambushes to actually mean something.  I guess I should buy CoV and level up my hero so I can try it out, it sounds like a decent team PvP from what I have read, and maybe Guild Wars.

Yeah, I probably should not have mentioned the initial post at all since I was only really concerned with talking to Hoax (it was also inartfully drafted, as the 3rd sentence does not really pertain to the OP).  Some latent desire to remain on-topic, perhaps?  Now that you have explained your initial post, I misunderstood it anyway.  I didn't take it to be a personal confessional, or your defense of yourself against people who have insulted you in the past.  I didn't know that anyone had insulted you.  I took it to be discussion of how to build a better mousetrap v156,987,652 or why mmogs suck v897,563,061,978,438.  I love those threads, they are the main reason I've hung around this community for, what, 4 years or so now?  And, to be fair, this is the "MMOG Discussion" forum.  Regardless of your original intent, I think it's fair to say that the thread had meandered in that direction by the time I made the post you find so offensive.

 Anyway, I don't recall ever insulting you.  I don't recall ever calling you a console gamer, I don't really know what kind of games you like.  I had no idea about your opinion on MMOGs until I read this thread, and I still don't have a particularly clear view of it.  I certainly have no idea how much experience you have in them and whether your opinion is rooted in ignorance or intimate familiarity.  I wasn't trying to pick an argument with you, especially since we seem to be agreeing on the central point of the thread ("Some people like MMOGs, some people don't.  They aren't going to change that much so if you like em now you'll probably like em in the future and if you don't like em now you probably won't.  Go now in peace to love and serve the Lord").  My suggestion of Diablo 2 wasn't an insult, I've played the hell out of that game and it really does sound like a game that has what you are looking for according to your list.  I have no idea why you are so pissed, especially if you really think console gamers are looked down upon here and just wanted to speak up for them, because I was speaking up for Diku-based MMOGS in front of the community that coined the term "catass."

In short, you seem to be taking this awfully personally, and I meant nothing personal.  Either I've been unclear about that in the past, or you are transferring your anger at someone else to me.

I don't really agree with the assertion that "if you don't like them now, then you never will".

I may not like them now, but I do see possibilities. They can be more.

The two main things that I see stopping that are 1) Many mmo and mud developers simply do not have the sensibilities of, for example, people who've been working in the console realm and 2) Many players are primarily playing for reasons other than gaming...In turn, the industry lacks the balls to make anything that doesn't cater to them.

Fuck meaningful. Fuck it right in it's big gappy anal canal.

Fun. Not meaningful. PvP is only good if it's fun for the winner and loser.

This 'achievement' and 'meaning' is what's shitting up mmo.

Preach on Brother Sky!

 :-D

Whatever happened to sportsmanship and winning and loosing gracefully?  I sure didn't win every baseball game and knew that it was the fun of the game, not freaking that I rocked the other team with my homerun, or didn't get to upset when things just didn't go well (dropped the ball on and easy double play, or swung and missed on a big fat meatball...), so why the fuck does pvp have to be so fucked up in games?

I hear you Sky, but that isn't the mantra PvP advocates have been chanting around these parts for years.  I may be mishearing them, but they seem to want a Shadowbane that doesn't suck, not a laggier massively multiplayer Counterstrike.  Besides, I don't really see any point of having a persistent world PvP game where the players can never do anything with consequences.  Just play Counterstrike, it'd be more fun.  And cheaper.

The Internet killed it, ate it and shat it out on a plate.

Meaningful PVP is such a loaded term, considering we are talking about games, which by definition have meaning mostly as entertainment. Some people can't have fun PVP without inflicting consequences on others, other people can't have meaningful PVP unless there are ladders and rankings and e-peen measurements.

If meaningful conflicts with fun for the majority of the audience you are trying to capture, it shouldn't be done. It's all about finding the desires of your target audience and hitting them, throwing away the stuff that draws people with conflicting desires into your game.

Right. That's why I love pvp but don't play any pvp games. Planetside is the closest to my ideal by a longshot, in the mmo space, as we all know. It doesn't punish you for losing, beyond the tactical consequences (my old 'hook up your nuts to an electrode' mantra). Partly because exp/levels is really secondary and not much consequence to your power and there is no 'lootz'. Just grab a loadout and go have fun. Put in levels that affect the power differential and phat lootz and the game starts getting shitty.

But hey, I've long since resigned myself to never having a pvp game that I'll like, given the unpopularity of PS. I was shocked to hear SOE was working on another one. My likes rarely align with profitability. I'm not exactly the LCD and whatnot.
There are degrees. Planetside confers bonuses in a lot of ways, depending on what your empire has conquered. That's a great idea, and fleshes out some tactical objectives, which is crucial. BF1942 was great with that, making some CPs more important because they spawn a tank or what have you.

Let's not bring in the 'why not play CS' argument, it has no place in discussing mmo. Whether it be the persistant world, the scale of combat (in world size and amount of combatants), the lack of having to spend time searching for decent servers, the centralized administration...there's lots of reasons I prefer mmofps. If you don't get that, there's no use discussing it anyway, it's a waste of time, I've tried many times ;) You either 'get' Planetside or you play BF2 (or whatever). I'm cool with that.

My answer would be that your definition of “game” only covers what I think of as one particular class of game. That is, games in which the objective is to maximize your score. To win. That isn't the only possible game.  MMOGs like EQ were originally called MMORPGs. The “Role Play” part points to a quite different type of game, that of creating a story for your character. In a storytelling game, an optimized character winning every encounter is a failure. Usually a dramatic loss of an encounter  is at least as interesting as a dramatic win. If you are gaming purely to “win”, a character created to spin an interesting tale will look pretty bizarre.

I’d say I play MMORPGs for “Adventure”. And a good adventure has dramatic failures as well as successes. My characters in WoW are usually deliberately “gimped”, for good storytelling reasons. And otherwise, the game is too easy to be much of an adventure. I rarely group, at least at low levels (under 60). Most pickup groups I have been in have been ridiculous. Four or five characters that could almost solo the encounter. Great if you want to “win” for sure, but not much of a story.

One big divide in MMOGs is the balance between production and consumption as entertainment. I’ve been lurking on this board for a good while, and I think it is more slanted to consumption than production. You want to visit interesting places, not build interesting places. You want new encounters to beat, rather than weave the same encounter into six different character stories. I want MMORPGs to feed me interesting stuff too. But I also want them to be places I can do creative stuff as well.  The latter can get much more like a job though, so I can see the appeal of a pure "consumption" MMOG.

Not you, silly!  :-P Someone else had (has) been rude to me. I've never had any issues with you.

We are slanted towards consumption as opposed to creation because it's usually more fun. Building in MMOG's has so far sucked monkey balls.

I dont see how the go play CS argument isn't at least partially valid.

*Italics are from Sky's post*

"Whether it be the persistant world" -- What is the point of persistence if the world just stays the same?  Why bother with persistence if all combat takes part in instances that do not interact with the world?

"The scale of combat (in world size and amount of combatants)" --  Again utterly meaningless, I've yet to see MMO combat other then SB that had even the meaning of the Boneyards Galatic War in Total Annihilation, hell even MPBattletech3050 was striving for meaning then every mainstream MMO other then SB has ever even come close to.  All they wanted to do was introduce supply lines, mech factories in certain systems that determined what mechs a faction could purchase and some bonus when a faction was defending their key systems.

Sure the scale you are mentioning can be quite immpressive, I will conceed that point to Planetside.  But I dont remember it ever being reflected in game tactics outside of hacker drops, AMS runs and hiding mobile spawn bases near the point of attack.  All of which were very cool things.  But just the tip of the iceberg wouldn't you hope?

"the lack of having to spend time searching for decent servers" -- This is a silly statement, somehow in a MMO where you can't join a server that boots all the asstards rigorously the asstards will disappear?

Again I'm not advocating for play to Crush, but wouldn't it be nice if in WoW they patched the look of Hillsbrad/SS to reflect the fact that it is a constant slaughter fest?  I'm talking more guards, ruined buildings, siege engines, new quests to supply npc troops etc.  EVEN THAT would be better then almost everything we've got currently.   A world that is merely a backdrop is not a world.  A MMO that is a single player adventure game with stupid npc's that fuck with you (known as players) and huge timesink grinds is not taking advantage of the unique aspects of the medium and that is annoying to me.

*edited* to add that Sky has a good point about scale of combat, although I feel that fps games are starting to ramp up the size/scale of battles more and more.

I have to admit that I'm really torn here.  Planetside was a great game, but it got old really fast.  I also loved BF1942 and again, it got old really fast.  So here I am playing DAoC after 4 years.  Why?  Well, I've never had a toon get to obscene realm rank so my motivation isn't to pwn_with_impunity.  I just like the idea that with time I am able to purchase abilities as I progress.  I also like the fact that RvR is a sandbox.  I can defend a keep, I can help take a tower, or I can just roam around and gank people at random. I design my gameplay session.  Sometimes it's nice that I create my own objective (help the realm, scout the battle front, or just solo for rp's).

Maybe I'm one of those sick mmog bastards that likes pain.  I like the realm rank disparity.  I like the idea that if I go out into the realm as a low realm rank person that killing someone of higher realm rank is a challenge.  I like the fact that there are sometimes long odds in a fight.  For me, the game is in the challenge and not in the victory.  So much so that every toon I've gotten to RR8 or so has gotten shelved so that I can try another class and a new challenge.  I enjoy the diversity, I enjoy the disparity, and I even find enjoyment in the lack of balance.  When I beat someone that I'm not supposed to, it's like a mini victory.  DAoC has so many problems with the PvP system that, once you understand the mechanics, it actually becomes like a game difficulty setting.  I know which classes are hard mode and which are easy.  The only downfall is the horrific grind to the endgame.  Thankfully that got much better with the catacombs expansion (still more room to improve!).

Games are getting so linear and directed that the "sandbox" aspect is quickly vanishing.  Just give me a set of tools and let me make my own fun.  That's what I'm willing to pay for.  As mmog's go, ATitD showed glimpses of an incredible PvP sandbox game.  The funny thing is that most people had associated PvP with combat for so long that they failed to see PvP in a non-combat situation.  Players made the laws.  Players could obtain the ability to ban other players.  Passage of tests within the game was often coupled to competition between players... which sometimes crossed ethical boundaries.  Now, if Teppy could remove the horrific grind from ATitD, I think that would have been an incredible PvP experience, albeit a non-conventional one.

Conquering territory in PS confers some benefits. The world stays the same, sure. But if I'm Vanu on a continent dominated by NC, it's not the same world as when it's dominated by Vanu, eh? The point of persistance is that you have a persistant battle. The lines rage back and forth, the battlefield changes as continents get locked out. I find that preferable to GAME OVER MAP CHANGE. It's more gradual and visceral. Of course, one of my major gripes about PS is that it needs a better game world to play in.

I never mentioned instances. Instances are great for pve mmogs or arena-style combat, not large-scale war pvp with combined arms.
Yes. I'll take that as agreement?

The PS reference wanes here, because I'm not a big fan of the way they implemented the world, but the ability to range between several conflicts and flank in meaningful ways shouldn't be brushed aside. Imagine having all the Middle East BF2 maps on one huge physical map, for instance (not instancing, :P).
No, but in practice, yes. Whatever that meant, heh. Speaking from experience, I boot up BF2, peruse the server list for a low ping/high player server, log into a server. Some guy shoots me and jumps into a jet. I log out, peruse the server list for a low ping/high player server and log into a new server. Someone starts knifing me with his medic buddy reviving me, ad nauseum. I log out, peruse the server list for a low ping/high player server and log in. Server filled up. Peruse the server list for a low ping/high player server, well all qualifying servers (minus the last couple) are on maps I don't like. Jump on a higher ping server, rubberbandy, log out. Peruse the server list for a low ping/high player server...finally say fuck it and play Civ IV.

In Planetside, I log into my server, pick my character and start playing.

Another point that combines both of those points: there's always a battle that's easy to get into. As you say, why bother with instances (individual small servers) that don't interact with each other (central server like PS). Sure, there are multiple 'instances' in PS (the continents), but they are all connected within the game.

Yes conquering territory in PS confers some minimal amount of world change.  But I'm saying a step can be taken that goes beyond a battle for static, almost completely uninfluenced by player fortress/bases.  Like those in DAOC and Planetside without the game automatically jumping to the other end of the spectrum where the winners become gods and the losers quit in dispair.  I mean have we all become so jaded in the less then 10 years MMO's have been on the radar to believe that it is just immpossible to do anything beyond:

PvE games with pvp on/off switches.
PvP games where the conflict can only have a minimal and reversible effect on the gameworld
PvE games

I hope not, I'm not ready to be that pessimistic about these games.  I mentioned instances because I really dont like them and they seem to be the bandaid de jour for game devs to avoid having to make meaningful gameworld altering play a possibility.

I'm sorry you have such a hard time with BF2 servers, I really question if you are aware of how to navigate fps communities?  As a rule there are only a handful of servers that are worth playing on for every FPS depending on your geographic location.  These servers will have the latest anti cheat programs running, a huge list of people with admin powers and will not hesistate to kick anyone for doing anything that they find stupid.  Now I will admit it can be frustrating on some levels to play on those types of servers.  Some of the people with admin powers will be dicks at times, and there is typically some favoritism and politics involved on the most popular servers (you'll often see random people kicked for no reason to open up a spot for someone who is a regular).  But those are the sacrifices one typically has to make to play against top tier players who are playing the game seriously and dont put up with any morons fucking up the game for everyone else.

Dashing around capturing flags in BF2 for 10 minutes and then resetting and doing it again is not the same as a full scale battle in Planetside.


My "meaningful PvP" agrument boils down to give us a weekly or daily storyline that is directed by which side wins/loses. Preferably daily. If the people over at 365tomorrows (http://www.365tomorrows.com/) can publish a 1 page short story every day for an entire year you'd think game devs could get their shit togather and be able to do the same thing. And don't make us read it (though make it available). Provide it as some kind of voice over spoken radio communication while I'm playing.

And I don't entirely buy the "procedural maps suck" argument. FreeCiv, HoMM I/II/III, or even Warlords I/II/III have random map generators that work just fine. The devs could procedurally generate the next day's battleground and then manually tweak it.

All of this is in the context of a "game" MMO. A "world" MMO would be a different kettle of fish.

If you read my other posts in this thread, you'd see that I've said that only desiring to "win" is missing the forest for the trees. That's not a game. That's the slot machine mechanic. I give two shits about results -- It's process that I'm more concerned about.

From a storytelling game point of view, I do care a lot about the results. A big win or a big loss is important to my characters story. But the moment to moment process of the encounter is not that significant to me. So I don’t find the “hit A to attack” mechanic too bothersome. I do like to have to respond a bit during an encounter though. My favorite classes are pet classes. With two characters to control there is potentially more tactical depth. There is also the possibility of almost “zero risk” play if you choose, and a dismaying number of Hunters in WoW do seem to chose that playstyle. Then the “game” becomes just accumulating stuff and levels efficiently. Real life is full enough of that already for me, so I don’t want to build my online time around it.

Nah you guys missed the point of my post entirely. I wasn't talking about the general idea of MMOGs being wasteful, I was talking specifically about wasting time within an MMOG. I don't approach my rec time aggressively or professionally. My rec time is just free time and I'm perfectly willing to let it go its own way, I don't need to cram the most amount of fun in as little time as possible. So if I were to farm Tyr's hand for 3-4 hours a day for 5 days in a row to get my reroll his epic mount (for example...) then that's not time I really wasted. My time's not wasted if I "sit in an overcamped Guk waiting for the Sage to spawn every half-hour".

When I was gearing my shaman up with fire resistance for Rag I reset UBRS dozens and dozens of times carefully running up to the door, seeing if I could target a rare spawn, then assembling some guildies if I could. From over a dozen kills of him I saw it drop twice. Neither of them went to my shaman (both in normal runs so it wouldn't go auto to me... and the dice were not on my side), so she picked up an infernal headcage from Kazzak instead. My time was not wasted there either.

I know you guys are gonna rag on me for "defending MMOGs" but honestly I like that part of MMOGs. Like I said I have a lot of free time, and MMOGs fill that nicely. There's not enough good books in the world that are to my taste to fill my time with, nor enough good movies/shows, and there's a limit to how much pub crawling or dancing or w/e I can take before I don't wanna do any more (like eating chocolate... first few mouthfuls are nice, after that it's not so good :P). So basically for a lot of my rec time I'm looking for something to give me filler and hand me a reason to keep playing. If you're looking to cram as much fun into your day then yeah I can see how you might not like the current model.

That's the problem with MMOG's. The main audience is made up of people who have so little free time that they HAVE to pack as much fun as they can into what time they can find. Time becomes a rare commodity to someone with a 9-5, significant other and/or pets/kids.

What I like about MMOGs these days is a nearly fully equipped max level character with extensive travel abilities, dungeon crawling, raids and pvp. The time i was given a 60 with tons of AA and ran around doing planes of power raids for a while was fun for while.

What I dont like about MMOGs is that bit in between installing it and the above. I've done it enough times i simply refuse to do it any more. So I dont play any, and aren't interested in any next gen ones at all. Something akin to a team fortress server would be interesting perhaps, i like a big world to run around in like mmogs offer.

What I like about MMOGs is starting from scratch, without twinking, without reading everything about the game ahead of time.  I like scraping up every copper to learn the next skill or buy the next weapon.   I like learning the area, swatting the rats, working the quests.  Then leveling and trying out a new skill / spell to see how it works, and moving on to the next quest and region.

I don't mind grouping if parts the the game are designed for it, as long as its not too many of the parts.

Instance dungeons and PvP battlegrounds are OK, but I'm only going to do each once or twice for any given character.   I don't fight in some lowbie cave for 10 sessions, why would I go into a raid instance for 10 sessions, or a PvP battleground?

As soon as a character hits the level cap, I retire them and start over with a new one.  I see no point to just keep playing it, unless there is new content to see, mobs to kill or places to explore that requires that level.   But if those mobs or places requires me to replay some content 10 times, then I won't bother.

That's why I'm still playing WoW after 11 months.  The classes / quests / areas are varied enough to keep me interested, and the progression is fast enough to avoid the 10x rule.

That's why I finished playing, say Planetside, in beta.  I had preorded, but cancelled, because I 'finsihed' it.  I  had played every faction, fought on every continent with every vehicle, was in many small skirmishes, and major assaults / defenses.   I couldn't think of anything new to see or try.

Having just played that yesterday - the Wretch mission is the capper to the arc, and the only failable mission, and the last mission that contact has to offer. I suspect like Veluta Lunata she's a one-note contact, with just that storyarc on offer.

CoH did this originally with the very last Malta arc, where you have to stop a giant robot from destroying the War Walls, only to get to it you have to run through a burning forest of Malta operatives under a time limit. If you couldn't stop the robot you don't get the arc-complete bonus and your souvenir for the arc is slightly different.

CoV is just throwing this in a lot earlier.

--GF

Also, writing++ on that one. In addition to one of the few cutscenes I've seen, the clues and all the contact banter were worth reading. CoV's contacts took a lesson from the focused ones in CoH and amped up the personality. (Calling back to a contact when you're working on a mission of theirs can result in some very amusing, or very touching, update text.)